Etihad Airways and Aer Lingus codeshare gains US regulatory approval

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has received approval from the United States (US) Department of Transportation to put its ‘EY’ flight code on Aer Lingus’ transatlantic services out of Dublin, Ireland.

From today Etihad Airways will offer ten weekly codeshare flights via Dublin to Boston, eight to Chicago, 12 to New York and bookings can now be made.

One of the unique advantages of the new transatlantic codeshare services to both New York and Chicago* will be the ability to pre-clear US Customs and Border Protection in Dublin, meaning Etihad Airways’ guests will effectively arrive into the US as domestic passengers.

US regulatory approval follows last July’s announcement of a historic interline and codeshare agreement between the respective national carriers.

Etihad Airways already places its ‘EY’ flight code on Aer Lingus flights between Dublin and Aberdeen, Amsterdam, Birmingham, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Kerry, Lisbon, London Heathrow, Manchester and Stockholm. In addition, the airline offers codeshare flights on Aer Lingus services from London and Manchester to Dublin, Cork and Shannon, from London to Belfast and from Cork to Amsterdam.

The UAE carrier launched services to Ireland in July 2007 with an initial four flights per week, increasing to six and then moving to a daily service in March 2008. This was further increased to the current service of ten flights per week in March 2010. From July 2013, capacity will be boosted by more than one third, with the introduction of a 412-seat Boeing 777-300ER on six of the ten weekly Abu Dhabi-Dublin flights.

Etihad Airways carried more than 215,000 passengers between Abu Dhabi and Dublin in 2012, with the route once again in the airline’s top 10 most popular. In addition to a premium lounge at Dublin airport, the airline operates an aircraft maintenance facility.

Özgür Töre is the founder and managing editor of award-winning travel news website; Focus on Travel News – ftnNEWS.com and Arab Turkish Travel Gazette – www.arabturkishtravel.com. Mr. Töre is the co-founder of RusTourismNews.com and UkraineTravelNews.com
Mr. Töre is a board member of Association of Tourism Writers and Journalists (TUYED) in Turkey and International Tourism Writers Alliance.
He holds a Master’s Degree in Project Management from Istanbul Kültür University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the Istanbul Bilgi University.